the ehrc guidance is nasty and unworkable and that's the point - it's a licence for anyone to play gender cop and question the gender of anyone they think somehow looks not woman, or man, enough for a given space. it's a flat-out encouragement of bigotry and discrimination against trans people

Librarians here found out about this via social media on Monday. Those I've spoken to are devastated and furious. No consultation, no attempt to respond to concerns. Just a constant stream of violence against the Humanities in any form it takes by people who do not value it. #skystorians

What the government is doing to trans people is a society-wide version of Section 28. It is a level of bureaucratic cruelty that utterly decimates a whole group of people’s rights and puts anyone who doesn’t ‘look’ right in the eyes of others under constant surveillance. It’s a horrific thing.

Interested in herbaria, plants and digitization? Come work with us! 3 PhD & Postdoc Positions in History & Phil. of Biology & Digital Humanities! #ERC Project BOTLEG; @ruhr-uni-bochum.de! Deadline: 25 May '26 #HistSci #PhilSci #HPBio #EnvHist #DigitalHumanities #AcademicSky #PhDSky Details below 👇

Still depressed about the EHRC and what it says about the decline of feminism in my lifetime. But, to all my trans & NB friends, colleagues & students: try to remember that only a small, genital-obsessed minority want this (however hard the media try to change that). Many many people support you. 💜

The second of @etreharne.bsky.social's Smithies lectures will be on Thursday 11 June, 17.15 in @ballioloxford.bsky.social - 'Medieval Manuscript Hunters & the Second World War'. All welcome! @oxmedstud.bsky.social @oxfordmedievalmss.bsky.social @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social

East Asian Studies is being gutted at Sheffield - all staff at risk with 8.6 FTE proposed to go (a third of us). Biggest cuts in Chinese and Japanese Studies. We’ll be taking a few days to process. Solidarity to Materials and Chemistry colleagues who are also dealing with similarly bad news.

An exciting job opportunity with my team - come join us as the Science Museum Collection Archivist! 📒📚📼📜💾📔🗂️ Part time (4 days/80%), permanent, based at the Science and Innovation Park near Swindon. Happy to answer Qs/ chat about the role before you apply. ce0111li.webitrent.com/ce0111li_web...

🚨We are hiring🚨 We are recruiting for 2x Archivist posts: Archivist (Access and Engagement) - fixed-term until March 2028. Project Archivist (Setting the Record Straight) - fixed-term, 12 months. To find out more about the roles and apply take a look at our website⬇️. #archives #jobs

Verrry much looking forward to seeing a copy of this from the Most Excellent @harryspillane.bsky.social

Writing has been independently invented maybe four times in human history. Radiocarbon dating has found evidence that the original inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) invented writing independently. buff.ly/PS5nm5j #ShareGoodNewsToo

#JobKlaxon We are looking for a permanent Lecturer in Global Medieval History to join us at @leedsims.bsky.social! Applications due 1 June. Happy to talk to anyone interested in an informal capacity. If you are in Kalamazoo, find me at #ICMS! #leedsmedievalstudies jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

I have read of unwanted medieval parchment MSS being used by gold beaters in the making of gold leaf, but a conservator friend recently poured cold water on the notion. So I was glad to find evidence that the practice was stilled used as recently as the 1950's (but using post-medieval MSS) 1/

‘Exploring Digital Cultural Heritage’ is now out in the wild! You can download an open-access copy (PDF) or read the free digital edition on Manifold uolpress.co.uk/book/explori.... Loved working on this with Eirini Goudarouli, @amsichani.bsky.social & the @uolpress.bsky.social team.

This is striking: 'by the early C11th the total sailcloth requirements for the Danish & Norwegian fleet would have amounted to about one million square metres - the annual production of two million sheep'. That's a lot of sheep & many looms... Richard Hodges citing Neil Price.

In light of closures of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences courses and departments across the UK in the past 2 years, what does that commitment mean? The University of Hertfordshire's announced closures of Humanities offer a case study for hard-edged reflection. 2/9 @victoria-collins.bsky.social

I was very, very fortunate to be taught palaeography by Professor AC de la Mare. Here’s Tilly replying to Bernhard Bischoff: “with regard to your request concerning MS. Add. C. 144, unfortunately we do not allow xeroxes to be made from medieval manuscripts” (October 1973) @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

2014 REF: 2026: closing UG History

Wow, this looks like an amazing opportunity…

PhD: Decoding #Medieval #Manuscripts with AI & Light Deadline: June 15 Joint project between the UK (NTU) & Belgium (UNamur) Develop an AI-driven, non-invasive workflow using #Hyperspectral Imaging and #OCT to identify species, manufacturing and degradation. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

We have an *extremely* important announcement to make. From Wednesday, we will be launching our puffin live cam, coming to you from the Farne Islands. So you can watch puffins all day long. In celebration, please enjoy this clip of puffins being really busy for 39 seconds straight.

✉️ Explore 145,000 medieval merchant letters as a live map: the correspondence network of Francesco di Marco Datini (c.1363–1412), spanning Florence to Barcelona to North Africa. Visualise routes, travel times & seasonality. docuracy.github.io/datini/ #DigitalHumanities #MedievalHistory

Castle Mound, Cambridge, 4.54am / 5.40am

Chemical analysis of ancient Roman mosaic glass bowls indicates they were likely crafted in Italy using glass imported from Egypt and the Levant, challenging previous assumptions about their origins. doi.org/hbzsqd

This is a key point that our head librarian pointed out to me. Flat or declining library budgets combined with rising ebook costs mean that increasingly the work of curating the collection is managed by outside vendors w no sense of specific institutional needs or attendance to concerns about AI.

Why’s an American pressure group that helped overturn Roe v Wade suddenly taken an interest in your local park? Anti-rights movements won't stop with trans people, and we must hold back the tide. Get behind @transsolidarity.bsky.social’s campaign: https://protectparkrun.uk/

Imagine opening old torn book only to discover that someone once repaired it using strips of paper. These strips are pieces of correspondence bearing interesting stories. Read more about them in Eng. and Ar. vevianzaki.com/hidden-corre... 𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐁𝐄 and 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐄 #mobasc #MSCA #MSCActions #Mariecurious

🧵 We tend to think the internet is permanent, but VANISHING CULTURE—the new 📚 from Internet Archive—starts with a simple reality: our digital record is far more fragile than we think 🕳️ 📖 Read for free: archive.org/details/vani... 🛒 Purchase in print: www.betterworldbooks.com/product/deta... ⬇️

Lost Pages of a Medieval Manuscript Recovered, Revealing New Testament Text www.medievalists.net/2026/04/lost... #history #medievalmanuscripts #digitalhumanities

A lot of what Mackenzie describes here resonates strongly with me. I wonder a lot about how individual teachers' voices get lost in endless AI boosting/critiquing. It is a hard time to teach and learn now, and I think the rawness of this post gets at what many are feeling.

"What we made a pink triangle, but made it digital"

The Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) database by CERL tracks copy-specific evidence in 15th-century books. Freely accessible and continually expanding through international collaboration. 🔎 Explore MEI: data.cerl.org/mei/_search

Great new teaching resources available for The Ellesmere MS - please share widely, and reach out to the creator with feedback if you use it next semester / for your own experiments! manuscriptreader.org

We’re currently recruiting for a Project Cataloguer on a 1 year fixed-term contract to catalogue parts of our archives relating to our transfer from Hamburg to London in 1933. 35 hours per week £30,842 per annum Apply by 12 May 2026 Apply now ➡️ warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/... #jobopportunity #UoL

Love this story…

I didn’t know that…

Mudie's Select Circulating Library lay at the heart of the Victorian publishing system. Karen Wade's site, now at a new URL, makes it possible to explore the library's catalogues as never before, with an index of 22,000 novels by 6000 authors. curatr.ucd.ie/mudies/ #victorian #bookhistory

We should bring back these lost pronouns, partly because they are cool, and partly to annoy the TERFs (bonus point to the article for mentioning Chaucer’s use of the singular ‘they’). www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Dream positions: 3 (!!) PhD placements at the Prize Papers with emphasis on finding students with the following language skills: French, Spanish, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages. (Of course, I emphasize the Dutch language!) www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/professional...

Fantastic PhD studentship opportunity - Spitting Image: political satire in Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries. Working across @exeter.ac.uk and @theul.bsky.social in partnership with the @camglamresearch.bsky.social and drawing on the Roger Law archive. #PhDsky

Amen, sister!

if we actually get a senior political figure excommunication then just a heads up that every single medievalist on here, we’re gonna lose our entire shit

Save The Lavender Menace archive. Please share / donate 🏳️‍🌈 www.scenemag.co.uk/scotlands-on...

New from me: Why funders shouldn’t withdraw money from open access publishing www.samuelmoore.org/2026/04/14/w...

We're currently recruiting for five (yes five!) Collaborative Doctoral Partnership awards at IWM See the full list of projects and partners here, with further details of how to apply: www.iwm.org.uk/research/doc...

In a world of mass-produced goods, Nepali lokta paper remains a unique Himalayan heritage. Without support, this craft may disappear. The new film ‘Nepali Paper on the Edge’ by Agnieszka Helman-Ważny offers rare insight into its production. 🎬 Full video: uhh.de/csmc-nepali-...

Here at Metro’s annual gathering re: our collective NYC digital culture repository. Illuminating to hear abt orgs that licensed some of their popular material with commercial rsch services (EBSCO) w/ the hope of making some 💰; turns out they made a pittance, and now their stuff is paywalled 🙁

✨Speech/less in the Early Modern World✨ Research Workshop, 23-24 April 2026 Emmanuel College, Cambridge Places limited. Please register as an attendee by 12 April: forms.gle/k9Xnz4gVFhe2Syez9 Thank you event sponsors! @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social @socialhistsoc.bsky.social

A long piece this week on the various kinds of AI foolishness I have seen lately. Tl;dr: in your professional life, do not use technologies in which you have no expertise and with which you have not engaged critically?! It’s not that complicated?! open.substack.com/pub/naomiald...